No need to end hunt ban
Regarding your report (January 3) on the Essex and Suffolk Hunt's Boxing Day meet, we are at a loss to understand why "one leading huntsman" should state that the hunting ban be lifted because a lot of people saw them at Holbecks Park.
Is he saying that because many more families than usual were out walking and relaxing on a bank holiday and saw, we assume, the handsome sight of well attired riders on beautifully turned-out mounts that those same spectators would vote to legalise hunting the fox with a pack of hounds again?
How many of those people, before the ban became law, would have wanted to see for themselves what a pack of hounds can do to a fox? We can't blame the hunt for trying to capitalise on its, for many, attractive public face as long as they don't believe we're going to be fooled into allowing them to return to its uglier private side.
As to the lack of protesters at his meet, MPs on behalf of hundreds of thousands of us across the country protested in Parliament and succeeded in introducing The Hunting Act 2004, making it an offence to hunt foxes with hounds. Assuming the hunt is behaving within that law, what would protesters be protesting about?
Joint-master James Buckle also mentions "grey areas" within the Act. If there is need for clarity to strengthen it (though cases brought by The League Against Cruel Sports succeed within the law as it stands), surely that can happen without, as he suggests, repealing the ban. Of course it can, so we won't fall for that one, Mr B!
We have witnessed hounds from a hunt in pursuit of a fox, which we could have considered an unfortunate mistake if it hadn't been for a hunt member ahead of the pack shouting "Which way did it go?"
Put your "grey areas" on the back boiler, Mr Buckle, and let's have improved monitoring of hunting's activities within the existing law.
ARTHUR AND JUDITH HOMES
Shimpling
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Friday 25 May 2012
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